You Are The Quarry.

It was earlier in the year 2013 that the author Ian M Banks let it be known through a statement that he had an inoperable cancer and the chances were not good that he would see out the year. This sadly proved to be true and he passed away on Sunday 9th June. It was such a short time between the wider world becoming aware of the seriousness of his condition, gall bladder cancer, and him succumbing to the disease. I can not imagine how hard this must have been for his loved ones and those close to him. Friday past I finished reading his last completed work The Quarry, released the month of his passing. I did not know what to expect from that book. I Certainly not the smallness of the world it takes place in. The quiet, and at times not so quiet, intimacy of the enclosed world of Willoughtree House, decaying and crumbling, perched on the edge of a quarry readying to swallow it whole. In that house a group of old friends gather about a friend dying of cancer. They are also looking for a mysterious video tape from their shared past that throws a shadow over all their futures. This is not the whole story. This is an Ian Banks novel after all. The dying man Guy and his young son Kit rail against the fate their lives together has brought them to. Their situation feels heart achingly real, like two candle flames flickering in a wind that threatens to extinguish them both.
             I read The Wasp factory ,his first published work so very long ago. Probably around '85 or '86. I remember how even in my know it all youthful arrogance I was a bit taken aback by some of its content. How I was even a little shocked by this artsy looking paperback I picked up in Harry Halls Bookshop in Gresham street. A couple of years later I read Consider Phlebas  for the first time. It sort of became the yardstick by which I measured my enjoyment of epic science fiction writing. You know IT WAS GOOD BUT NOT AS GOOD AS CONSIDER PHLEBAS. That lasted a good wee while. Until I read Use Of Weapons. Which then became my new favorite Ian M Banks. I think I was a shallow reader lacking wider references or sophisticated tastes. I just knew what I liked and The Culture books were so damned good. I even got to meet him a couple of times. At the readings he did at Waterstones Bookshop in Royal Avenue, Belfast. He was very personable and always chose interesting and entertaining excerts to read for the amusement of those attending. This was off course many years before there was even a glimmer of the purple hues of geek chic so the whole evening may have appeared terminally dull to the cooler eye. Yet we were more than happy in the cloistered trappings of the freshly published Banks. We were not friends. I was just a fan who would attend his readings given a chance. Just the Face From Space in the back row looking with utter admiration at this worldly wise whisky lover with a brilliant mind gifted to the world for a short time. All twenty seven of the books he had published in his lifetime are scattered about my house in different places. All of his books are worth seeking out. All of them worth keeping and sharing. The Quarry is a worthy addition to that remarkable body of work. The twenty eighth book is about to join them.
               There will be no more.

Come And See Now.

Got some new ink done by Joseph at his Lost Souls studio. He had also got some astonishing work recently which he had traveled to Russia to get done. At the hands of someone he respected. Who does watch the Watchmen indeed. The hands that have decorated his skin are some of the best in the world. He knows this. He works very hard to pay for the travel and the expertise. It as though the canvas of his time on this earth is right there in front of you. I had something done which has haunted my imagination since childhood. I do not remember its origins or why it should have affected my imagination as it did. I read a book recently which suggests the origins of such notions but it was a series of explanations I am not altogether comfortable with. The book dealt with the insights of one Cesare Lombrosso and I do not wish to take on board the broad associations his theories bring to the surface. I found some of his ideas deeply repellant and have since learned in later life he believed in even goofier things if that is even possible. Lombrosso suggests a desire for tattoos is indicative of a criminal pathology. A inescapable desire rooted in the very bones of those born to be criminal. That we are not shaped by our experiences or the homes or class we grow up in. We are what we were born to be. It is not even destiny. It is just bone, blood and birth. Lombrosso was an Italian criminologist who held the belief that crime was an inherited trait. Passed on by human nature. THE SEEDS OF MORAL INSANITY AND CRIMINALITY ARE FOUND IN MANS EARLY LIFE. He is considered by many to be the father of modern criminology. FORENSIC MEDICINE SHOULD RECOGNISE THAT IN THE CASE OF THE CRIMINAL MAN WHO IS IN CONSTANT STRUGGLE AGAINST SOCIETY, TATTOOS-LIKE SCARS ARE PROFESSIONAL CHARACTERISTICS. For me it all comes across as a series of Eugenics based sound-bites. Turin in the eighteen hundreds..what a swinging scene. RELIGION, WHICH TENDS TO PRESERVE ANCIENT HABITS AND CUSTOMS, CERTAINLY PERPETUATES THE PRACTICE OF TATTOOING. Oh Cesare, with these insights you are spoiling us.
              Also read three Chuck Palaniuks. Lullaby. Haunted. Damned. Feel like a spring has burst out of the top of my head, with a diseased cuckoo calling the hour, like something out of a Looney Tunes short, only with actual blood and gore and brain and bone matter. He is a powerfully affecting writer of stories that can shock and cause you to despair at the monstrous banality of modern culture and the demons that stoke the engines that drive it. poor man. To see the world as he does even for one day. Must be awful. His hell is right here on earth. Staring back at him from the side of a milk carton. I was brought up a catholic so my vision of hell is your basic Bosch Nightmare with glowing autumnal skies, medieval torture equipment, screaming demons ,fiery wyrms chewing at your go-gos with an ever lasting chorus of wailing and gnashing of the abandoned and forgotten.Hell for him does not seem to be a place of painful retribution but a place where the Damned endure poor lifestyle choices. Ah well, in the scheme of things America is a relatively new thing so it is no suprise a child of that fabled country should see hell as such. A thoroughly modern hell. Something has scrambled his genius so that it spurts out of him in these bookish orgasms. I think he is quite brilliant at times and appalling at others. Reading three of his books back to back made me want to take a a hot shower to wash all the neurotic fear sweat away, only I cannot. My immersion heater is busted. No hot water.
              Three Chuck Palaniuks followed by a cold shower.
              No thank you.
              That is too old school Irish catholic a response even for me.
               

The Kindness Of Strangers

WHOEVER YOU ARE,I HAVE ALWAYS DEPENDED ON THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS. So said Blanche Dubois in the Tenesse Williams play Streetcar Named desire. And poor Blanche was as nutty as a fruit-cake. I myself am something of  a fruitcake. There is no denying it. My own experiences of the random reactions of strangers being along the common lines of WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? or WHY ARE YOU NOT ME? Although I share the ache of fictional characters sadness at the lack of empathy at broad in the world I try not to get too hung up on it. Indeed, every now and again I am pleasantly suprised by the actions of others and when this happens I feel rich with life. Take this for an example. I am not the fastest human being in the world. In fact I am a rambling tangle of uncoordinated limbs that at times seem to act independently of each other. When I tried my hand at waitering my nickname by the other waiters was Lightning. For I was anything but a lightning bolt. These days I am worse than ever, my circus days long behind me. One morning I was ambling along in an attempt to get a bus to work. The driver had seen me but was not prepared to wait and started to pull off leaving me in my usual state of embarrassment and abandonment. I sighed trying to feign indifference. I DID NOT WANT TO GET ON YOUR STUPID BUS ANYWAY. Then it stopped and a figure leaned out and waved me forward. C'MON She said with a wide friendly smile. I speeded up and hobbled forward(part of my brain was saying PLEASE DO NOT SHOUT RUN FORREST RUN as all the bus passengers press their faces against the bus window and howl with laughter. I have history after all)actually managing to get aboard dignity intact. She had kindly asked the driver for a little patience and that is what he demonstrated. I was so grateful and it even caused a ripple of smiles amongst those seated.     
            Anytime we saw each other after that we would always say hello and chat. Just about the ups and downs of life in general and particularly the minefield that is retailing. I learned she was from Poland and that she and her husband were both making the most together of a new life in Northern Ireland.
             I asked her name.
             MAGDALENA she replied.
             I babbled a load of comic related gobblydegook in suprise. A few years back I had worked for an American Comic Book Company called Top Cow. Amongst the things I had done whilst working for them was to create a character called The Magdalena. And this was the first time I had ever met anyone with that name. That is her in the photograph with a copy of the re-released graphic novel of the origin story of the character. I felt she had to have a copy if only to prove I was not some looney she had unwittingly encouraged with a simple act of kindness. I mean it was not as though I had claimed  to have visited the moon (although in truth I have, in all its many phases.)
             MAGDALENA meet THE MAGDALENA.
             The most recent comic I have worked on is about North African Pirates making slaves of Irish people.
              I think if I was running for a bus and a Swarthy Swashbuckler leaned out beckoning me forward I might now pause.
              Wait ten minutes.
              Get the next one.

The Woods Are Dark And Deep.

Just look at this tree. Is it not magnificent? I had been down in the country staying with my sister Anne, working on a script for another issue of Noe The Savage Boy. In my mind I felt as though I had spent weeks at sea on a nightmare journey on a North African Pirate Ship called The Issabella. (Not because my sister was mistreating me but because that is what the next part of Noe's story involves.) Feeling a bit stir crazy I decided to go for a hobble around The Black Island. My own Island of Adventure. As a boy I had stumbled across a downed Sontaran war Machine and only just managed to foil its pilot Field Marshall Soldar's attempts to conquer the Earth. I did so by jamming his breathing tube with a Peggy's Leg cola flavored stick of rock. A top tip if you should ever find yourself face to face with a lone Sontaran warrior. Also, it is not widely known but beneath the dark waters of Lake Muckno which surround The Black Island are a Zygon spacecraft (Who's crew rest in suspended animation) as well as a colony of Sea-Devils/Silurians (Who also sleep in suspended animation). Someday both sleeping crews will emerge from their deep sleep and that will truly be squeaky bum time. I feel connected to The Black Island. I always have. Even on the worst of days I have been able to draw some strength from it. I have sat beneath the spreading branches of ancient trees as rain of biblical proportions has fallen to earth. The trees never notice I am there. They rarely notice us as we move through our lives so quickly. To a tree man-time is like the beating of a humming-bird's wings. I have sat with my skinny legs dangling off Lake Muckno Bridge feeling the night draw in. Watching tree tops sway in a breathing motion as the wind explores its branches. Dark water below mirrors the darkening skies above as twilight spreads. Like a curtain falling signalling the end of one act and the beginning of another. A hunting man armed with a shotgun and a brace of Coneys passes me following an excited springer spaniel who's nose vacums the ground. The grass has stories to tell and a good springer can read them all. A sublime night is meant for walking on the water...And a tree like this is why this place is so special to me. I even scrambled about its rooty mossy base looking for a Carroll-like entrance to a world beyond this one. The kind of entrance a waistcoat wearing rabbit with a fob-watch might use. Alas no such Coney showed. No magic rabbit bounded by. No magic entrance or exit revealed itself that day. The day it does will be the last day this world sees me. 
                   ...Now if I can only remember where I found this tree...

A Night At the Museum.

I was gifted a copy of this wonderful book by the author whom I had the pleasure of meeting and eating with at dinner the other night. I had been to the Ulster Museum for a talk by the author Jeffrey Deavers. A night organized by David Torrance of the No Alibis Bookstore in Botanic Avenue. It was a lovely evening with the sun splitting the trees and the choice of venues was just great for a talk by the creator of Lincoln Rhyme. I was there by invitation of my boss John Mc Mahon who knows  I always have an appetite for good food and good company. The evening was a sell out, loads of the authors new hardback The Kill Room were shifting and the craic around the dinner table afterwards was as they say up to ninety. We walked from the museum to Connors for a late evening meal. Afterwards we strolled to where John had parked his car, down in the holy Land. It was as I said a really lovely evening and the campus grounds around Queens University were balmy and oddly quiet. Just ambling along with these two fine mystery writers who had travelled so far to entertain their fans. They were obviously good friends who brought out the best in each other conversationally. Jeffrey's voice seemed deep and precise. John's danced for joy. John gave me a copy of his book refusing to personalize the signature as it would devalue the book in the event of his death. A Poe like modesty that endeared him all the more. Anyone who knows me will know that MR James is one of my favorite authors and antiquarian ghost stories one of my favorite genres. I am not keen on pastiche. I like authors to just go for it. To write as though they are the first and only authors to write in this vein. And that is how John Connolly allows this story to unfold. It is a one sitting read that demands an almost immediate reread. Just as I reread A Christmas Carol every December I now think I shall reread the Wanderer in Unknown Realms every...
              ..well,every time I feel like it.
              Special mention must go to Emily Hall for her disturbing black and white plates that punctuate the text. They really are quite haunting. The product of some Ghostly Edwardian nursery.
               My momento of a lovely evening is a book that gave me disturbing dreams.
               Just wonderful.

Magic with Science.

ITS SATURDAY TEA-TIME IN 1977 ALL OVER AGAIN!Ring out Tom Baker's majestic brown tones. And you know,that is what it feels like. It would appear Big Finish Productions have managed to discover the secret of time travel. it is a combination of talent, good scripting and high production values layered with dollops of affection for the material. Its Magic with Science.
                Oh what a joy. A whole season of stories with the 4th Doctor and savage Leela. Six audio adventures that tick so many boxes and all of them blue. Whovanna! What else can I say.The season picks up with the Doctor and Leela departing Victorian London leaving behind them the wonderful Jago and Litefoot after a near fatal brush with The Talons Of Weng-Chiang. There is Space Station Nerva. A Morovanian Museum. Roman Britain and The Iceni. Daleks. Riots in central London(who would have thought.). There is the Master. A giant Wyrm Of The Earth and There are Kraal. All with wonderful guest performers and retro soundtracks.
                 Big Finish are a marvel to me. What a hotbed of talent this company is. The very best actors and actresses pass through its doors. All of whom seem willing to return to work again and again. Along with great and atmospheric scripts that entertain on every level. All carried along on waves of sound that takes you just about everywhere in space and time.
                 Tom Baker is on top form here. He remains for me the worlds greatest living Englishman. Born with a voice that transcends the passing years. Give him a Bafta. Give him a knighthood. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, give him a big hand. Tom Baker. Sigh.
                  Louise Jameson is equally spot on. The years have been kind to this dear lady. She seems even more talented than I remember her as a child. Her Leela rings so true. The feral warrior with the true heart. By turns brave, wily and witty. And I mean Louise as much as Leela. I could listen to Louise Jameson talk all night. Listen to the extras at the end of each adventure and you will see what I mean. Leela has some of her finest moments here. They expand on the notion of her being on an Eliza Doolittle learning curve experiencing a growing enlightenment as a companion to the Doctor. Losing her savage belief in magic to an understanding of science as an explanation for events. The tone is occasionally darker than that of the originally transmitted material but it never strays into feeling like some thing other than the period that it originated from. Some of Leela's attempts to understand the motivations and actions of others are insightful and warmly human. An endearing foil to the Doctor's occasional alien excesses.
                  What a season this is. Six stories that range from Gothic science fiction to historical drama and Ken Russell/Bram Stoker inspired Peak District Looniness. With such attention to period detail and invented possibilites you realise the only limits here are the listeners imaginations.
                   Geoffrey Beavers is in here. What a voice. What a magnificently nuanced voice. Sibilants rattle as he madly rages.
                    Micheal Cochrane is in here. Playing a wholly English character with all the virtues and vices this entails. The sun never set on his characters Empire.
                    Rachel Stirling is in here. Proving that talent does not just run in her family. It gallops like Arkle.
More please.
                    During this period of Who in '77 I still missed the lovely Liz Sladen as Sarah Jane smith. The show was changing yet the presence of this savage aboard the Tardis felt right to me. I was changing a bit too. My mum had been having a bit of a hard time so this other family took me in over a long summer past. They were a lovely family and when they took me in they treated me as one of their own. Although they did cut off all my hair and put me in shorts. Not for any mean spirited reason. I think they feared the thick foilage on the top of my head may have harbored nits. Not unlikely. My own ma said my bugs wore hard-nailed boots. She used to drag a nit comb through my hair that could have deforested a strip of bush in the Amazon. Up to that point I had grown a wild shock of thick curly hair. My Tom Baker hair I proudly believed. I was probably more like Stig Of The Dump. A feral Gallifreyan wild child. So they took me to a barber and had it all chopped off.  What a sight I was to my brothers and sisters with my shaved head, skinny body and shorts.
                 Even minus my sock of curly hair I thought Tom Baker the coolest looking person ever. He remains to me now as then magical. His image combined with the growing influence of punk rock which had crept across the sea and penetrated the bubble of the Northern Irish troubles began to weave a spell upon me I would carry for the rest of my life. Just the seed of change when change was what was needed.
                   Anyway, I believe there is another story in this series out there. Night Of The Stormcrow. A story that sounds just great.Available to subscribers only. I have never subscribed to  nor belonged to anything(apart from the Dennis the Menace fan club. I used the pass for i.d. back in the day. It never failed to gain me entrance to pubs or nightclubs). For the first time I feel like I may be missing out. Oh well.
                   As I said this season was a joy. It might seem old fashioned. It is not Timey Whimey. It is not humany wumany but it was a series of really well made engaging adventure stories.
                   Would it be so wrong to want more?    
               

The Game Is still Afoot.

It was no Study in Scarlet and I am no Sherlock Holmes but it remains a mystery to me. Where did the Elephant go? Who took it and why? It is now ten years to the month since I wrote and drew this strip for fortnight magazine. It was the first thing I submitted to the then editor Malachi O Doherty. He greatly encouraged me to speak in the medium I was most comfortable with and wanted to communicate ideas through. Hence the monthly slice of Boobie-Babble that was Ouija Board Ouija Board. I remember at the time the mystery of the vanishing Elephant was unfolding in real time. I expected developments. I expected answers and in real time they never came. I felt I was Truman Capote and this was my In Cold Blood. The mystery remains just that. As yet I have no resolution.
             Please do not mock.
             Even though it might appear more Scooby Doo than Ripper Street.
             That Elephant remains a pretty damn charming icon of a former time now passed.